I am always on the lookout for books about Florida and its history in order to learn more about my new home state. Here are my reviews of the three latest reads.
The State You're in: Florida Men, Women, and Other Wildlife is the latest book by native Floridian and journalist, Craig Pittman, the author of Cat Tale and Oh, Florida! ,among others. Pittman has collected fifty-one of the articles he's written over his thirty year career writing for the Tampa Bay Times and other publications. He is particularly interested in Florida's history and environmental issues, but he has a knack for finding the absurd, the unusual, and the humorous in Florida and turning it into witty, interesting insights into the culture of his home state. He covers a wide range of topics, from professional mermaids to python and bear hunts to the Florida scams of "Colonel" Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's infamous manager. There are heroes and villains in the stories and lots of people, who may seem ordinary on the surface but are extraordinary underneath. Not all of his stories are for laughs, his stories about crime and criminals are as equally moving as his lighter stories are funny. But wait, there's more: one of my favorite pieces is one of the shortest, Pittman's musing on the deep, dark secret hidden by Mike and Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch. (No, not that one) Pittman's wit and wordplay stand out, and he is a gifted observer of the human condition. The book is a quick read, and you'll be entertained and intrigued on every page. (Read Craig's 7 Questions with us here https://chattingwiththehistocrats.blogspot.com/2021/05/7-questions-with-florida-author-craig.html )
The Seminole Wars: America's Longest Indian Conflict by John and Mary Lou Missall is the book I've been looking for since moving to Florida. It's a relatively brief, but thorough, history of the three Seminole Wars fought between 1817 and 1858. A lot of Americans don't realize that the Seminole Wars had a huge impact on America's history in the 19th century. Because of time and curriculum constraints, I never really spent much time on the Seminole Wars when I taught, and that's a shame. The whole American story unfolded in the Florida territory, then state. White pioneer settlers moved into dangerous, often inhospitable territory, displacing and threatening that territories native inhabitants. Florida also was a hotspot for the debate over slaver because, for decades, enslaved African-Americans fled south from Georgia and the Carolinas into Florida, well before the more famous Underground Railroad took escaped slaves north. The U.S. army fought three wars with the Seminoles, both to protect the white pioneers and to retrieve the runaway slaves and return the "property" to their masters. Not only were the Seminole Wars the longest Indian conflict in U.S. history, but they also represented America's first defeat; the Seminoles never signed an official peace treaty with the government. The government simply gave up, making the Seminole the only "unconquered" Indian tribe. The Missalls' book is a thorough and quite readable history of the not only the wars, but also the bigger picture - that is, how the wars reflected and affected the country's issues and struggles as a whole. The Missals have also written several historical fiction novels, set during the wars, that I am tempted to read.
Florida by Lauren Groff has been out for a couple of years, and it garnered a lot of attention, including becoming a National Book Award Finalist, and I'd picked it up a few times before finally reading it. A couple of caveats before I continue: I mostly read nonfiction (history) and a little historical fiction; and I rarely read short stories. Since high school, in fact, I have probably only read a handful of short story collections. Florida is a collection of stories about Florida, even though they are not all set in Florida. And I just couldn't like it, even though I finished it. I enjoyed Groff's writing style, full of vivid imagery, but that wasn't enough. I found the characters whiny, uninteresting, and unlikable. Worse , the stories have no point. They just peter out, with no climax, no conflict, no resolution. I'm wondering if that's just part of modern fiction. Any one of the dozens of short stories I read in high school literature classes is leagues better than these. I can't understand the lavish praise heaped on this book, and I can't recommend it.
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